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ggplot2 VS Matplotlib

Compare ggplot2 VS Matplotlib and see what are their differences

ggplot2 logo ggplot2

Application and Data, Libraries, and Charting Libraries

Matplotlib logo Matplotlib

matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces publication quality figures in a variety...
  • ggplot2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-27
  • Matplotlib Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-14

ggplot2 videos

Learn R: An Introduction to ggplot2

More videos:

  • Review - Review ggplot2 Line Graph Exercise
  • Review - Code-through and review of Ggplot2 in 2

Matplotlib videos

Learn Matplotlib in 6 minutes | Matplotlib Python Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ggplot2 and Matplotlib)
Technical Computing
12 12%
88% 88
Data Visualization
23 23%
77% 77
Data Science And Machine Learning
Data Dashboard
10 10%
90% 90

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ggplot2 and Matplotlib

ggplot2 Reviews

5 Best Python Libraries For Data Visualization in 2023
ggplot is a system for creating graphics declaratively. It’s based on the Grammar of Graphics of R programming language and is tightly integrated with Pandas. ggplot just requires you to declare how to map the variables to aesthetics and primitives to use and handles the rest automatically. Remember, ggplot is not recommended for creating highly customized graphics.
Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization
Ggplot is a Python data visualization library that is based on the implementation of ggplot2 which is created for the programming language R. Ggplot can create data visualizations such as bar charts, pie charts, histograms, scatterplots, error charts, etc. using high-level API. It also allows you to add different types of data visualization components or layers in a single...

Matplotlib Reviews

25 Python Frameworks to Master
Matplotlib is a widely used tool for data visualization in Python. It provides an object-oriented API for embedding plots into applications.
Source: kinsta.com
5 Best Python Libraries For Data Visualization in 2023
You can use this library for multiple purposes such as generating plots, bar charts, histograms, power spectra, stemplots, pie charts, and more. The best thing about Matplotlib is you just have to write a few lines of code and it handles the rest by itself. Metaplotilib focuses on static images for publication along with interactive figures using toolkits like Qt and GTK.
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Matplotlib is an open source Python plotting library that's used to read, import and visualize data in analytics applications. Data scientists and other users can create static, animated and interactive data visualizations with Matplotlib, using it in Python scripts, the Python and IPython shells, Jupyter Notebook, web application servers and various GUI toolkits.
Top Python Libraries For Image Processing In 2021
Matplotlib is primarily used for 2D visualizations such as scatter plots, bar graphs, histograms, and many more, but we can also use it for image processing. It is effective to get information out of an image. It doesn’t support all file formats.
Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization
Matplotlib is a data visualization library and 2-D plotting library of Python It was initially released in 2003 and it is the most popular and widely-used plotting library in the Python community. It comes with an interactive environment across multiple platforms. Matplotlib can be used in Python scripts, the Python and IPython shells, the Jupyter notebook, web application...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Matplotlib should be more popular than ggplot2. It has been mentiond 98 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ggplot2 mentions (11)

  • Ask HN: What plotting tools should I invest in learning?
    For random, quick and dirty, ad-hoc plotting tasks my default is GNUPlot[1]. Otherwise I tend to use either Python with matplotlib, or R with ggplot2. I keep saying I'm going to invest the time to properly learn D3[4] or something similar for doing web-based plotting, but somehow never quite seem to find time to do it. sigh [1]: http://www.gnuplot.info/ [2]: https://matplotlib.org/ [3]:... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Relative frequency of letters in five-letter English words (Wordle aid) [OC]
    I got the list of five-letter words from the words package in R, created the QWERTY keyboard grid with base R and tibble, and visualized the data with geom_tile in the ggplot2 package. Source: 10 months ago
  • [OC] U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges: 2002 to 2023
    Thanks, it's an interesting idea! I definitely could implement this with scale_fill_gradientn) in ggplot2. Source: 12 months ago
  • Facts about Aaron Boone's Ejections as Manager
    I used the ggplot2 package in R to create these figures. Source: 11 months ago
  • Fueling Innovation and Collaborative Storytelling
    This might not be at the top of your list, but science fiction often presents advanced data analysis and visualization technologies. Open source data analysis tools such as Python's Pandas and R's ggplot2 have revolutionized the field, making complex data manipulation and visualization accessible to all. In the science fiction novel The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney uses a variety of data analysis and... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
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Matplotlib mentions (98)

  • Implementing semantic image search with Amazon Titan and Supabase Vector
    Matplotlib: for displaying our image result. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Releasing The Force Of Machine Learning: A Novice’s Guide 😃
    Matplotlib: Acomprehensive library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to retrieve and analyze crypto order book data using Python and a cryptocurrency API
    Data visualization: utilizing Python's Matplotlib for visualizing order book information. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Ask HN: What plotting tools should I invest in learning?
    For random, quick and dirty, ad-hoc plotting tasks my default is GNUPlot[1]. Otherwise I tend to use either Python with matplotlib, or R with ggplot2. I keep saying I'm going to invest the time to properly learn D3[4] or something similar for doing web-based plotting, but somehow never quite seem to find time to do it. sigh [1]: http://www.gnuplot.info/ [2]: https://matplotlib.org/ [3]:... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • PSA: You don't need fancy stuff to do good work.
    Python's pandas, NumPy, and SciPy libraries offer powerful functionality for data manipulation, while matplotlib, seaborn, and plotly provide versatile tools for creating visualizations. Similarly, in R, you can use dplyr, tidyverse, and data.table for data manipulation, and ggplot2, lattice, and shiny for visualization. These packages enable you to create insightful visualizations and perform statistical analyses... Source: about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing ggplot2 and Matplotlib, you can also consider the following products

Plotly - Low-Code Data Apps

GnuPlot - Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility.

Pandas - Pandas is an open source library providing high-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools for the Python.

Bokeh - Bokeh visualization library, documentation site.

Origin - Origin is your new digital playground. It’s where you go to find the best that EA has to offer.

D3.js - D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.